Archive for November, 2004
Spent the end of October stuffing myself with turkey at the traditional familial gathering in Arendal. Took a day off work and rode down friday morning with Morten who wanted some company.
While I was studing in the states we had potluck dinners, where people brought salads and pies and stuff. I had picked up some goodies in Paris a few weeks before, so this year we had some foie gras for starters, and dark nougaty goodness for coffee in the form of a huge black Toblerone. My poor uncle sacrificed a bloody thumb in order to get at the foie gras - but it was sinfully good once served with a some chilled white wine.
There was a lot of wine that evening - I have vague memories of laughing along with the 70s comedy stylings of Dave Allen.
I got to hang around with my “nephews” - my cousin’s kids - at the local playground the day after. An excellent way to get the digestive system working: running around with hyperactive three year olds. Kids who know only the phrase “more. More! MORE!”
Grandma moved into an old-fogies-home, which she seems to be enjoying. The house she used to live in has all her old stuff, so we all got to go over the contents - plonking down post-its laying claim to odd books or a nice set of crystal. Felt strangely mawkish to do this while Grandma is still alive.
November 29th, 2004
Appleseed - computer animated movie.
I enjoyed the manga quite a bit - the story of a utopian society built on clone/robots whose purpose is to stabilize the rather volatile human emotions.
There is a lame anime that attempts to compress books three of the four books into one story, and failed miserably. I picked up a new edition of the old anime (fooled by the new shiny cover! sucka!) and the commentary track was quite good - noting that the story made no sense, and the previously bitter enemies are suddenly co-operating.
The new movie was shown as part of the Oslo film festival. It’s all computer generated, but the characters are all cel-shaded. This was occasionally distracting, but gave the movie a unique look. Hand drawn still looks better (sometimes you can see the coloring algorithm stuttering - trying to figure out which color a plane should be).
The action rocks hard though. The story adapts the same three books as the anime, but does a much better job of it - condensing plot and running about 30 minutes longer. They also changed the plot quite a bit to make certain themes clearer. In the story Bri and Deunan are found together. In the movie Bri finds Deunan after having disappeared from her some years previous - giving Bri and Deunan a much more interesting dynamic.
Deunan is also much more a super-hero in the movie. In the books she’s a very good soldier - but here she is super-humanly good.
Still, the story in the movie is easier to follow than the books. The books need a couple of readings to catch all the subtle political machinations. The movie spells things out in greater detail, which is good - because there is a lot of exposition to cover. The ending in the movie is more satisfying than the book - much more explosive and dramatic.
November 24th, 2004
Half-Life® 2 Released For Play
November 16, 2004, 12:07 am · valve
Half-Life 2 is available now for purchase and to play. Those who pre-purchased their copy via Steam may access the game by double-clicking on the Half-Life 2 icon in their Steam Games directory. To purchase your copy via Steam, get Steam now.
We hope you enjoy it!
Finally the encrypted game that’s been sitting on my hard drive for the past month is ready to play.
And I’m stuck at work for the next ten hours or so.
Aurgh!!!! Frust!
November 16th, 2004
Departed Oslo insanely early in the morning (wake up at 4:30 am early!) to get to the airport in time for the plane departing at 07:10. Got to the station in time - but while I was reading the instructions on the new ticketless travel pillars (what card did it want? credit card or frequent flyer card?) the train up and left! Not a nice way to start the morning. Thankfully I was early enough (this time) to have time for a proper coffee before boarding.
The Paris trip is a reward/comp to the development team for not being salesdroids. The suits go on quarterly kick-offs, have rewards flung at them for meeting their budgets, while we just beaver away in the background, shipping a new version every year or so…
So the powers that be smiled on us and sent the entire developer herd off to Paris. We have some new hires starting in a few months, and they got to come along too, which was a nice way for them to see their new cow-orkers.
Paris - Eiffel Tower. Louvre. Obelisk. Le Metro. Grand Palais exhibitions (Turner! Whistler! Monet!). Queues - massive queues! Institut du Monde Arabe. Topless show at the Lido. Champagne. Wine. More wine. Tankards of ale. Saturday morning cartoons in French. Bookstalls along the seine. Gargoyle souvenirs. Want to this some more. Fabulous.
We were very lucky with the weather - got down on Friday and had a quiet, clear, sunny day - perfect for climbing the Eiffel Tower. Saturday also fairly good, but the occasional rainshower did make me long for an umbrella. Sunday was nice and sunny if a bit cold and windy. Still, it could have been a lot worse this time of year.
Shopped large quantities of chocolate and gooseliver on the flight home, and a new bottle of Talisker. Yummy!
Also picked up a new pair of earmuffs/headphones for the iPod. The new ones are larger and clip to the ears, so they don’t fall out so easily. Also they should be nice and warm in winter. 
November 15th, 2004
Excellent Chinese opera-style melodrama - opera because it takes our protagonists half an hour to finish dying. Melodrama because the emotions are overblown and super-intense.
Which is why I like Hero better. In Hero the emotions seemed more grounded and believable. Here we are asked to believe a few days can divert a love that has waited for years, in the space of about 30 minutes of screen-time. Now granted, the heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of, but it does seem a bit … over the top?
Which of course makes for great melodrama!
My pet peeve - the throwing knife’s tendency to stop spinning just before hitting its target. I’ll go along with the boomerang effect and the loop-the-loop aerial acrobatics, but I just think it would be cooler if the knife kept spinning until it hit something, instead of signaling that it was two seconds from impact by lining up for its attack run like a figher jet…
But worth seeing - blood drenched tragic romance doesn’t get much better than this.
November 10th, 2004
(via scripting news and USA Today)
the election results graphed by county.
This does slam home three things:
* the cities votes for Kerry, the rural areas for Bush.
* the cities contain a lot of people - just look at how red California looks on the map.
* very little changed between this election and the 2000 results. Gore did a little better in the south-west, but on the whole very few counties changed color.
November 4th, 2004
Kerry Calls to Concede, Bush wins popular vote and the electoral college (maybe…).
November 3rd, 2004
It’s the morning after, and I didn’t want to get out of bed today - I didn’t want to collapse the wave function - as long as I didn’t look outside, Kerry was sweeping the election.
Damn - it’s still up in the air. Everything hangs on Ohio, and several states can flip-flop as the absentee ballots are counted. We are entering the twilight zone here - no exits for the next two weeks.
November 3rd, 2004
Leave off going to the gym for two weeks, and the gym gets its vengeance when you do show up. My arms feel like they are going to fall off….
So why have I been slacking off the gym?
Boozing and fast women? Well, only a bit.
Mostly work - I prototyped our new user interface, made most of the buttons work, faked the missing screens, and wrote a test script for our users to try out. Spent a whole day testing it out together with the users, getting lots of useful feedback. A week later we tried it out in a controlled lab setting, where the users got no help from us.
Let’s just say it was less painful than it could have been. The stuff we fixed between the first and the second tests worked for the most part.
Now - muscle relaxant. Come here, 10 yr old Ardbeg. I need to loosen up a few muscles.
November 1st, 2004
